Jason Lyon Music

Tag: Giant Steps

  • 1959 and All That

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    Jason
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    There was a documentary a while ago on 1959 as the year that changed jazz for ever. It focused on Miles’ Kind of Blue, Brubeck’s Time Out, Mingus’ Ah Um and Coleman’s Shape of Jazz to Come. Of course, jazz had pretty much become set as bebop/hard bop, and there was a desire to explore…

  • Playing Giant Steps with One Scale

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    Jason
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    This tune gives most learning players an attack of the vapours. The chordal motion is weird, the tempo is whip fast and it involves playing over progressions in the key of B, which most players haven’t spent very much time with. Before we begin, I’ll admit that the approach we’re going to look at here…

  • Coltrane’s Substitution Tunes

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    Jason
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    On two groundbreaking albums, Blue Train (1957) and Giant Steps (1960), John Coltrane presented a group of original tunes that stretched to breaking point the possibilities of functional harmony. Shortly after these albums he began increasingly to turn his back on the traditional use of chord changes. Of the 11 tunes on these two albums…